


Some Time Spent In New York Town

by soupytwist



Category: Sports Night
Genre: Backstory, Gen, M/M, New York City
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-04
Updated: 2007-06-04
Packaged: 2017-10-09 10:16:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/86161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soupytwist/pseuds/soupytwist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Good times and bad times and Jenny McCarthy's cleavage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Time Spent In New York Town

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to villainny, mrsronweasley, snoopypez, and tangleofthorns for the almighty beta reading.

1\. _March 17th, 2005_

"There is no way in hell I'm going to a Broadway show," Casey had said.

This had been quickly followed by "Over my dead body!", "Since when do you like musical theater anyway?","You want to use our precious Thursday off for that?" and "In the words of the great prophet: no!"

There had also been a longer discussion in Antony's (a different Antony's, in a nicer area, but still) in which Casey argued that it didn't matter that he loved the movie, that he'd enjoyed _Closer_ as a cinematic experience, that he'd always thought that guy off _Frasier_ was pretty funny. He still wasn't going anywhere near a Broadway show, not on opening night and quite possibly not on any other night, either. The fact remained, however, that they were wearing suits and getting out of a chauffeured car and basically showed every sign of being about to go in to see Spamalot.

"I cannot believe you badgered me into this," muttered Casey, trying to smile at the cameras and not get blinded by the sheer amount of neon signage and not embarrass himself all at the same time.

Dan just grinned at him, because Dan, somehow, was having a whale of a time. How the guy who'd spent the afternoon sprawled out on the sofa in their office could get the energy to bow and flirt - practically even doing a little dance, for the love of god - Casey didn't know. Maybe Casey was getting old.

"It's an hour or two of people singing and making Monty Python jokes, and then we can go home. It'll be fine," said Dan a minute later, as they made their way through the lobby and up the wide, sweeping staircase to the open doors.

Through them, people could be seen, laughing and talking and finding their seats. Casey wondered how many of them were people he should have heard of, and then decided he didn't really care. "If it's a travesty, I'm blaming you."

Dan looked thoughtful . "If it's good, do I get the credit?"

"Considering how I wouldn't be here at all without you, and our long years of working together? No."

Dan turned to smile at him. "On the other hand, I no longer have to fear being torn to pieces by ravaging hordes when they find out you've managed to spend years - years! - in this fair city without truly appreciating the joy that is a Broadway show. Overall, that's gotta be a gain."

"I took Charlie to that.. kids' thing!" Casey protested.

"That totally doesn't count."

"I went to that other thing with you, with the mimes. I just didn't _like_ it."

"I didn't know it had mimes in! You can't hold _mimes_ against me. Or Broadway: Broadway is definitely not responsible for mimes."

"And anyway," said Casey, ignoring Danny (and the millions of potential holding-mimes-against-him jokes which threatened to overwhelm them) in favour of sitting down, "I think you're wrong. I'm way more to be feared than ravaging hordes." He debated whether to take his jacket off or not, then mentally said 'screw it' when he saw Dan was removing his, and put it over the back of the seat.

"As much as I find you deeply, um, threatening, and whatever? You don't stand a chance against a pack of rabid musical theater fans. The ravaging hordes should be taken seriously, my friend."

Casey grinned. "Yeah, but I know where you sleep."

"And I know your ticklish spots, so you can stop that right now." The lights went down and Dan poked him in the side. "That goes double if you criticize in the middle of the performance."

"I would not!" Casey protested, but the curtains were going up, so he shut his mouth on the rest of his denial and focussed on thinking up really disparaging similes for the set design instead. That would show Dan. Ha.

Two hours later, his stomach hurt from laughing, and he owed Danny ten bucks, because he, like everybody else in the theater, was standing up and clapping madly enough to make his hands sore. This also meant, however, that he didn't notice that Danny was not only failing to remind him of this in a loud voice, but wasn't laughing, pointing or doing the "told you so!" sign at him either. Instead, Dan was simply applauding politely, with a grin on his face which said that if he had been born a cat, the cream would have gone and the canary would have been having a tiny avian heart attack. But Casey didn't see this until it was too late, and the crowd were going crazy as five greying but decidedly familiar figures made their way across the stage.

"Danny, Danny, it's-" Casey looked, he saw, and he realised. "You knew they were going to be here, and didn't tell me?"

"Yup!" Danny's grin was now such that the canary was probably toast, and even the dog was feeling kind of nervous. "Now shush, they're going to say something." He grabbed Casey's hand and turned his face to the stage, and it stayed there right up to the singing, at which point the audience ended up waving their arms. Casey would have worried that he looked silly, except he was distracted by Dan, who pretended he was going to sing along before looking at Casey's expression and laughing.

Then it finished, and they began to make their way out. It felt kind of weird to be feeling the cold breeze again, be thinking about normal things like where the car was and how to get past the press with as little fuss as possible. Casey was still smiling, though, as he turned towards the spot where the car was going to pick them up - and then Danny's hand on his arm stopped him.

"Case, you're going the wrong way."

"We didn't come from over there?"

Dan grinned again, and this time it beat out even the neon lights. "Yeah, but I got us in to the afterparty. Which is _that_ way."

Casey gaped.

"Happy birthday, by the way."

Casey snorted. "That would work better if I hadn't seen 'CASEY' written on your calender... on the page for September fifth."

"I know." Dan snickered, and patted Casey's arm consolingly. "Oh, and also, you owe me ten bucks."

 

2\. _September 11th, 2001_

Dan's in Chicago. He wakes up lazily; he spent longer than he meant to at the post-game the night before, but it's OK because all he has to do this morning is write up some copy for his column (he has a column, he thinks for the hundredth time into the hotel-standard pillow) and maybe sight-see a little if he can be bothered, and tomorrow it's one short interview and then home. He yawns and stretches and makes some complimentary coffee. He eats a stale croissant.

He turns on the television at 9:03.

 

3\. _15th January 2001_

It started with the 2 o'clock rundown.

Well, maybe that wasn't entirely true; if pressed, Casey would be the first to admit that, as with most of his life these days, it had started when he'd tripped over the new intern at KTSA, who had just looked down at him on the floor and said, "That means you must be Casey. I'm Dan." But as far as this particular incident was concerned, the 2 o'clock rundown was pretty much it.

*

Danny had been surprisingly quiet most of the morning, but Casey had put that down to residual Jewish guilt about actually enjoying himself at the Christmas party. That, and boredom: it was the first day back after the holidays and nothing was happening. Most of the stuff for the night's features had already been done, Jeremy was trying to get everyone to record themselves saying "hello" so their computer could "greet us each day with the hope and inspiration of technological advancement!", or as Natalie put it, "bug the crap out of everybody until they either go nuts or give in." It was a typical downtime day, and the fact Dan hardly talked in the rundown except to say that Casey was right and they should _totally_ do a feature on the new kind of sports bra coming out - well, that didn't have to mean anything at all.

 

*

"Did you know that more Americans have gone to the moon than have pitched a perfect game?" said Dan, once they were back in the office.

Casey, who had been idly flipping through the latest _Sports Illustrated_ as he walked but was still mostly capable of recognising a lead-in when he heard one, looked up. "No - should I?"

"Twenty one to seventeen, my friend." Danny was now pacing. He looked distracted, dishevelled, and some other things beginning with d.

"Twenty one people have walked on the moon?" asked Casey, who was actually interested, although he still wasn't going to tell Danny about the astronaut costume he'd gotten that one time for Halloween.

"Yep. Well, some of them just orbited, but the principle remains the same: more have done that than have pitched a perfect game of baseball. And you would think," Dan continued, "that knowing this was proof enough that I have not yet lost all my faculties."

"And yet?" asked Casey, who also knew his cue.

"And yet I can't for the life of me remember which International League team Tom Seaver was on when he got his break." Dan huffed in a way which implied he held Casey personally responsible for this.

Casey blinked. "OK, and you're not just looking it up in one of the many baseball-related books we have around here because...?"

Dan looked very serious. "That would render the knowledge meaningless, Casey."

"You work on a sports show and looking up a sports-related piece of trivia would be cheating?"

Danny got the look on his face which said he actually _was_ serious. "I was thinking this morning in the shower - you ever notice that most of the best ideas come either just as you're falling asleep or in the shower? No? Anyway, I figured that if my subconcious knows more than I do, then it only makes sense to let it make the decisions now and then."

"You're letting your subconcious make all your decisions for you?" said Casey, mentally picturing the horror that could result.

"No - just the big ones, the ones you can't really weigh up properly all at once. Only my subconcious -" he made a little kicking motion at the chair "- is getting it wrong."

"Your subconcious.. is getting it wrong. Okay." Casey tried not to sound too confused, before sitting up straighter and bopping the desk with the rolled up magazine as light dawned. "You mean, if you remember then you'll do one thing, and if you don't, then you'll do something else?"

"Yes!" Dan's 'you just exceeded expectations!' smile was still one of Casey's favourite things ever, and somehow Casey didn't think that was going to change any time soon. "And don't bother asking what the decision's about, either, my friend, for I am savvy to your wily ways."

"Wily ways, Danny?"

"I know, but I choose to ignore it. I'm giving it til the end of the show tonight. I am Letting My Mind Decide."

"And good luck to it," said Casey, and went back to _Sports Illustrated_.

*

Casey had thought Dan would probably remember by the eight o'clock rundown.

"And that is why, love you though I do, none of you are allowed to mention the name Tom Seaver to me, or give me any clues about this at all, until the show is over. On pain of death!" said Danny earnestly.

The board room fell silent.

"Is there any chance we can just, y'know, ignore that he said that and move on to segment 33?" asked Dana, finally. "Cause that would be great."

"Segment 33 doesn't have anything to do with Tom Seaver, does it?" asked Danny suspiciously.

"It's about the Raiders, so if it did they'd be in trouble. Which is what you're going to be in if you don't-" Dana swung round as the door opened. "Jeremy!"

*

The next half hour was mostly spent defrosting Jeremy, who had apparently risked too much in the name of quality toasted bagels.

*

Dan finished his intro to the piece on Sarah Hughes and Dave's reassuring voice was saying "two and a half minutes back" into his ear before they returned to the subject.

"So, why Tom Seaver?" asked Casey idly.

"Why not Tom Seaver?" Dan ruffled the papers in front of him.

"Attractive guy, great baseball player. There's no reason why _not_ Tom Seaver."

Dan grinned. "Glad to hear it, cause you got a problem with Seaver, you got a problem with me."

Casey stretched. "I'm just saying, there's got to be a reason why you picked him and not some other arcane piece of information you can't immediately call to mind for this... whatever it is. Why him and not, I dunno, the name of OJ's dog or something?"

"I know that one - it's Chachi, of all things." Dan did a little nervous finger-roll on the table. "I... it's just, they didn't have to take the chance on the unknown guy, y'know? They could have said, hey, we don't know him, he's hardly played pro, and compared to all the other guys on the team, he's a stick. They could've said, you can't hack it in New York, buddy, go home. But they took that risk, and then bam, he's the Rookie of the Year and they're winning their first World Series."

"It's always a chance with a new guy," said Casey, because he didn't have anything else to add when this clearly meant something he just wasn't getting. He glanced at Dan's face. "But good for them."

"That's what I'm saying."

*  
They left late after the show, as usual, and they were halfway to the elevator when Danny suddenly turned and said, "I remembered, by the way."

"Yeah?" Casey checked his pocket for his gloves, because damn. "What was it?"

"Jacksonville Suns."

Danny looked happier than Casey had seen him in a while; it was nice. "So... score one for the subconcious?"

"Something like that."

They said goodbye to Allison and Kim as they left, tried to remember the names of the West Coast Update staff coming in - Casey was suddenly glad that Sally had moved on to better things. There was a _bing_ from the elevator just as they got to the doors; Casey grabbed Dan's scarf from the table by the door and stepped in. "Does this mean we're actually going to find out what the big decision was about?"

Dan stepped in after him, and grinned. "Ask me later."

 

4\. _27th May 2000_

Sometimes, Dan just walks.

It doesn't really matter where - it's not a conscious thing, not a desire to better himself, although sometimes he tries to think that. It's just that every now and then he'll remember that he spends 14 hours a day in the same air-conditioned office, and even though he loves his job, that's when he has to actually take his lunch break for once and just... walk.

He's walked to the Cathedral of St. John (he sat for a while and apologized to God for still not getting the whole Christianity thing), he's talked to old Chinese guys loading huge crates of noodles in the back alleys (they were actually really cool). He's spent ten minutes debating with himself whether or not it'd be too nerdy to actually go into the Flatiron building just to spy on the editors for Tor publishing, and ate his lunch in Union Square when he decided that yes, yes it would. Last time, a guy playing the harmonica on the L train told him there was something cool going down by the Maine Monument, and he ended up getting a free lunch from a bunch of Australian violinists.

Once he brought Casey along, but Casey, while intellectually understanding the concept, spent a lot of it making jokes about Dan's sudden need for a herd of elephants or a sherpa guide and not really getting it at all. Casey, as Dan has recently had cause to remember, doesn't do well without a specific destination in mind.

Dan's pulling on his coat when Casey comes back from editing. He's expecting a "be back in time for the eight o'clock run-down, yeah?"; barely a month after Draft Day, he figures that's the best he can get. It could be a lot worse, and he wakes up every day glad that it isn't. He's a lucky, lucky guy that he's still here at all.

Instead, Casey says, "Hold on a second, I'll join you."

There's a pause; Dan's shock must be evident, because Casey looks kind of flustered. Dan has to mentally shake himself to speak, almost stumbling a little in his haste to get the words out before embarassment wins and Casey changes his mind. "Yeah, that'd be great."

It kind of is.

 

5\. _June 10th 1996_

"Dana said it was good?"

Casey returned from his internal reflection on the ways in which the bus's air conditioning sucked, and faced his travelling companion. "Dana said it was good."

"They really liked it?"

"No, we sent them _Mr Rogers Neighborhood_ by accident instead. For the fifteenth time, Danny, yeah, they liked it."

Dan flailed a little, which at least made a change from the nervous tapping. It had been a close run there as to who it would drive nuts first: Danny, or the rest of the bus. (Casey had been betting on the rest of the bus, personally.) "I don't think you're getting this, Casey - they want to interview us in person! Tomorrow we have to, what's the word, oh yeah, _persuade hard-assed network executive people to give us lots of money to talk about sports._ Which they might actually want us to do for a _national audience_. How are you calm about this?!"

Casey snorted. "_Somebody's_ got to stop you from actually giving the poor bus driver a heart attack."

"I didn't do anything!" Dan protested, in the way that always reminded Casey how much closer to his teen years Dan really was.

It was kind of endearing, actually. "Danny, you threatened to _sing_."

"Yeah, but that man is a minion of Satan, put on this Earth to make sure we spend as much time as possible on the goddamn Jersey turnpike. That's due cause, my friend."

Casey raised a thoughtful eyebrow, which he liked to think was distinct from his 'questioning', 'pensive' and 'annoyed' eyebrows. "Did it ever occur to you that maybe it's the turnpike itself that's evil?" He took a swig of water from his canteen - warm. Eugh. Better than nothing, though, and definitely better than the soda... things Danny liked to order, which were huge and seemed likely to be emitting sugar into the atmosphere in a variety of terrifyingly artificial colors.

Dan looked intrigued. "What, like the land version of the Bermuda triangle?"

"It's a theory."

"I always thought that was Houston."

"Maybe there's more than one."

"An evil network across the country, all secretly controlled from Jenny McCarthy's cleavage."

Despite the years they'd already spent in this cramped, overheated bus with its smell of old lunch wrappers and lotion, Casey couldn't help but grin. "Well, it is mighty."

"Beyond mere mortals' ability to comprehend," said Dan, solemnly. He reached into the bag of supplies, pulled out a book. "You want to swap? Cause I'm not going to read any more of this - John Grisham only works on me for an hour or two before my head wants to explode."

"Sure," said Casey, but it was only a few pages before the words started to blur into each other and he was in the middle of a really bizarre dream involving a chorus line of NBA players when he suddenly realised somebody was shaking him and calling his name.

"Casey! Wake up, you lazy ass!"

Casey yawned and stretched, and made a most undignified noise as he discovered that his mouth now tasted like something had died in it. He then attempted to sit up, at which point -

"Ow! Goddammit, how do they find this material that sticks to your skin like that? Every bus, _every single one_." He peeled himself off the seat, rubbing the sore bit of skin while glaring at the man who was going to be hosting a goddamn _national_ sports show with him, who was currently laughing like a Muppet. "Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. What did you want me to see, anyway?"

"Not much. Just- we're there." Dan pointed out of the window to a smoky outline on the horizon, the giggles now replaced by a grin Casey had never seen before. "It's New York."


End file.
